Purpose

The “what is beautiful is good” (WIBIG) effect implies that observers tend to perceive physically attractive people in a positive light. The authors investigate how the WIBIG effect applies to user personas, measuring designers' perceptions and task performance when employing user personas for the design of information technology (IT) solutions.

Design/methodology/approach

In a user experiment, the authors tested six different personas with 235 participants that were asked to develop remote work solutions based on their interaction with a fictitious user persona.

Findings

The findings showed that a user persona's perceived attractiveness was positively correlated with other perceptions of the persona. The personas' completeness, credibility, empathy, likability and usefulness increased with attractiveness. More attractive personas were also perceived as more agreeable, emotionally stable, extraverted and open, and the participants spent more time engaging with personas they perceived attractive. A linguistic analysis indicated that the IT solutions created for more attractive user personas demonstrated a higher degree of affect, but for the most part, task outputs did not vary by the personas' perceived attractiveness.

Research limitations/implications

The WIBIG effect applies when designing IT solutions with user personas, but its effect on task outputs appears limited. The perceived attractiveness of a user persona can impact how designers interact with and engage with the persona, which can influence the quality or the type of the IT solutions created based on the persona. Also, the findings point to the need to incorporate hedonic qualities into the persona creation process. For example, there may be contexts where it is helpful that the personas be attractive; there may be contexts where the attractiveness of the personas is unimportant or even a distraction.

Practical implications

The findings point to the need to incorporate hedonic qualities into the persona creation process. For example, there may be contexts where it is helpful that the personas be attractive; there may be contexts where the attractiveness of the personas is unimportant or even a distraction.

Originality/value

Because personas are created to closely resemble real people, the authors might expect the WIBIG effect to apply. The WIBIG effect might lead decision makers to favor more attractive personas when designing IT solutions. However, despite its potential relevance for decision making with personas, as far as the authors know, no prior study has investigated whether the WIBIG effect extends to the context of personas. Overall, it is important to understand how human factors apply to IT system design with personas, so that the personas can be created to minimize potentially detrimental effects as much as possible.

中文翻译：

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虚构人物的吸引力如何影响设计师的看法和 IT 解决方案？用户远程工作需求的实验研究

目的

“美丽的就是好的”（WIBIG）效应意味着观察者倾向于以积极的眼光看待外表有吸引力的人。作者研究了 WIBIG 效应如何应用于用户角色，衡量设计者在使用用户角色设计信息技术 (IT) 解决方案时的感知和任务绩效。

设计/方法论/途径

在一项用户实验中，作者测试了 235 名参与者的 6 个不同角色，要求这些参与者根据与虚构用户角色的交互来开发远程工作解决方案。

发现

研究结果表明，用户角色的感知吸引力与该角色的其他感知呈正相关。角色的完整性、可信度、同理心、可爱度和实用性随着吸引力的增加而增加。更具吸引力的角色也被认为更令人愉快、情绪稳定、外向和开放，参与者会花更多时间与他们认为有吸引力的角色打交道。语言分析表明，为更具吸引力的用户角色创建的 IT 解决方案表现出更高程度的影响力，但在大多数情况下，任务输出不会因角色感知的吸引力而变化。

研究局限性/影响

WIBIG 效应在设计具有用户角色的 IT 解决方案时适用，但其对任务输出的影响似乎有限。用户角色的感知吸引力会影响设计人员与该角色交互和参与的方式，从而影响基于该角色创建的 IT 解决方案的质量或类型。此外，研究结果表明需要将享乐品质纳入角色创建过程中。例如，在某些情况下，角色具有吸引力可能会有所帮助；在某些情况下，角色的吸引力可能并不重要，甚至会分散注意力。

实际影响

研究结果表明需要将享乐品质纳入角色创建过程中。例如，在某些情况下，角色具有吸引力可能会有所帮助；在某些情况下，角色的吸引力可能并不重要，甚至会分散注意力。

原创性/价值

由于人物角色的创建非常类似于真实的人，因此作者可能期望应用 WIBIG 效应。WIBIG 效应可能会导致决策者在设计 IT 解决方案时偏爱更具吸引力的角色。然而，尽管 WIBIG 效应与角色决策具有潜在相关性，但据作者所知，之前没有研究调查过 WIBIG 效应是否扩展到角色背景。总体而言，了解人为因素如何应用于包含角色的 IT 系统设计非常重要，以便创建角色以尽可能减少潜在的有害影响。